Marina

Yep and the £205 a month difference between your rent and the mortgage is a pittance compared to the capital gains BTLetters expect. Even if the house only goes up 5k a year they are ahead of the game. Which leaves you priced out of the market permanently. I hope you enjoy renting under 6 month Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreements for the rest of your life. I have to say if I were your age I would be getting pretty pissed off about it.

Why look out below? Today's 'policies' may not have put off an entire generation but they have priced out most of them. Look out below? Why? Investors have replaced FTBs as the foundation of the market.

Good, keep posting to keep everyone here updated. Maybe if people here realise others are up off their arses, maybe if they realise if they sit on theirs they will be renting forever, maybe if the government realises how angry people are at being priced out by investors, maybe if people generally start to realise what is actually happening .... maybe things will start to happen.

Would his name be Ken by any chance?

Wow, your maths is sharp. Pity your comprehension isn't so good. I said the 'flour content' of a loaf. The cost of a loaf of bread includes flour, yeast, baking it, wrapping it, packing it, transporting it etc. I do know that 20% of 30p is 6p - but that isn't what I said. There is another interpretation of course - which is that with all those extra costs the average Joe is even less able to afford a property - leaving the field wide open for investors with equity a'plenty to finance further purchases. This is what is actually happening it seems to me. Your interpretation is that some sort of armageddon scenario is quietly inflating waiting to burst and kill us all. Mine is that the property market is slowing moving into the hands of investors.

And what do you all do? .... carry on picking over every little bit of news about interest rates and stock markets. I am telling you, a few flour bombs at an Inside Track seminar, a few placards, a noisy demonstration outside whatever London hotel they hold them in ... will do more for the 'cause' than a trillion posts on here.

Half the posts on here are about Interest Rates and the Footsie blah, blah, snooze, snooze. All around you events confound your wisdom. Interest rates - HERE - are not rising along with some other countries'. The FTSE is at a 2 week high. The FTSE has not gone into melt-down after its dramatic drops a few weeks ago. Buy to Let investors continue to buy. First time buyers are still priced out. The housing market moves up. No credit squeeze - for every lender that squeezes another relaxes its lending criteria. Surely it is time for an end to this pathetic picking over of every little bit of news about interest rates and stock markets. Unless and until BTL is taxed to level the playing field for would be First Time Buyers - NOTHING WILL CHANGE. You should be directing your efforts to getting BTL taxation changed or you should just give up - lay down and take the good kicking that some parts of society - the nouveau riche BTL landlords - is giving you.

Not where I live. We're in a 'first time buyers don't matter any more' situation here. Houses still selling quickly and at prices that seem to get dafter by the day. A year and a half ago 4 bed detached boxy estate houses had come down to 275k - in a tough market for sellers. Since last Autumn's interest rate drop they have moved back to where they were 3 years ago - at up to the 350k mark. Crappy little 2 bed victorian cottages are now 265k and more. And we're not in London and it's not one of those nice, dinky home counties villages.

So what! Go into Tescos and you can buy a 'value' loaf for 30p or an expensive loaf for £1. They both pretty much taste the same to me. If the flour content of a 30p loaf goes up 20% - it will be what 33p. Yes, this will cause a housing crash. You'd be better off pelting the Inside Track organizers at one of their seminars with a few bags of flour.

Well you could post on here until hell freezes over or you could get together with a few like minded souls and disrupt an Inside Track seminar. Correctly handled this would get a lot of publicity which you could use to galvanize the priced out generation to marching through London demanding a change to the favourable tax treatment of BTL. I don't imagine 1 person in a thousand has ever given a moment's thought to the social revolution that BTL is causing. But with the average BTLetter owing 5 properties - this represents a huge change to property ownership. I've said it here many times - give it 20 years and we will have a new society only it will look very much like an older society - a Dickensian one. Doing NOTHING is not an option.

I think you should all turn the other cheeks and show the people at an Inside Track seminar your arses'.

Because they have never thought about it and never had the facts explained to them. Inside Track are the enemy. They must be discredited.

Pathetic. Is that what it has come down to? 'Money in the Markets might get interesting' .... A forlorn hope that a stock market crash will trigger a recession and house prices will come down. You are grasping at straws. Go and disrupt an Inside Track seminar. That would liven things up and get your cause lots of publicity.

That's it - ring up the Co-Op! That will solve the problems. Argue, debate, come up with red herrings about other ethical issues, obfuscate, distort, twist, turn and .... ring the bloody Co-Op! BTL is the big issue. It is the only thing about this housing market that could easily be affected by legislation / taxation. If BTL became uneconomic because of new taxation - the market would drop to 'normal' affordability levels for First Time Buyers and some semblance of sanity might return - without the long hoped for but not coming higher interest rates and, most importantly, without a recession. So, stop arguing the toss here and get together and disrupt an Inside Track seminar - get a load of publicity and make everyone in the country realise what a negative effect BTL is having on our society. People like Inside Track are driving BTL - it's time to fight back. Inside Track are the enemy.

hordes hoard means to save something for future use

Surely you ought to just admit you have missed the boat. I am in my 50s - but with my youngest only 11, still a good few years away from retirement. But, I understand your mentality. You are not a risk taker. You watch the stock market go up and up and think 'I must get a bit of this action, but is it about to fall? So you prevaricate and don't invest'. You watch gold go up and up and think 'I must get a bit of this action .... etc.' Same with property. You've watched it go up and up, you're watching it now defy gravity and you think 'what the heck, I really, really must get some of this action.' I'd buy stocks in companies that make money from people's debt problems if I were you. You won't find BTLs that pay for themselves and investing in what is probably the most illiquid of investments seems a bit foolhardy if you are retiring soon. I bet you're really thinking 'If I could only buy 5 properties that would pay me a pension throughout my retirement ....' - well, dream on, you should have done it 10 years ago. You'll have to look abroad for decent yields now. Regarding everyone trying to keep this thing going - did anyone WANT the recession in the early 90s? Of course not, but the markets will always have their way. You cannot run an economy on borrowing - forever.

Excellent, get some posters showing those falls and turn up with 20 mates outside the next Inside Track seminar so everyone going in can see them. Notify the press you are doing it and wait for the fireworks and publicity.

What an absurd use of the words 'pyramid investment' - it's not an investment at all, it is quite simply using the tax paid by people who are working now to provide the care needed by the generation before them who are no longer working. Again, there is no 'investment' here. The tax I am paying now is paying for the care of people who need it now. It's a 'here and now' thing. Arguments about whether I am paying enough 'now' to fund my care in the future are spurious. You will be paying for my healthcare in the future.

People like this have priced YOU out of the market. They 'own' half a dozen properties. You own NONE. You can scoff at how stupid they are - ho, ho, ho, look how much debt they have - but, if she gets through the next few years unscathed, she'll be laughing and you'll be renting forever. Instead of congratulating yourself on how clever you are not to get caught up in it all - you really should be storming Whitehall demanding a change to the BTL taxation laws. But you don't need to do that do you? Just sit it out and wait, that will do the trick won't it?

Of course, in a sense, you are all loonies. You're mad to take this lying down.

After quite a few years in the building game, and being a house owner all my adult life, I have, as you may imagine, twigged that a large component of the price of a house is the land. However, land prices, as you so rightly point out, are artificially constrained. So, I tend to take the view that 'land prices are insane ... and what is the intrinsic value of what I am buying ... and it is - bugger all - so you'll never catch me with a 50 year mortgage. I'd become a travellor first.

And as long as he and his ilk do that, you and your ilk will be priced out. His sort are the reason the crash hasn't happened and, unless legislation is brought in taxing BTL/second homes, the crash is permanently off.

I am going to a seance to night to ask my childrens' unborn children how they feel about being born into mortgaged slavery. I have a feeling they might choose to be born elsewhere.

You must agree there are lots of people that 'buy' the VI bull? There is a constant and insidious stream of half truths, suggestions and mis-information. I agree it is not easy to regulate .... wait, hold on a minute, yes it is - because it bloody well used to be regulated until Margaret Bloody Thatcher got involved. When I were a lad, aye, the most you could borrow was 2.5 times one salary and 1 times the other. I think it is a pretty good rule. If interest rates are high your mortgage payments stay manageable. If interest rates are low, your payments go down leaving you disposable income to spend. Surely it is better for an economy to grow by people spending disposable income than by spending borrowed money. Nothing is perfect - as you point out - but that is not an excuse for trying to make it better. The lenders have tied the whole country in knots and the government has been complicit - desperate to keep the economy ticking over at any (borrowed) price so they cannot be called financially incompetent - as all previous Labour governments have been. The irony is - this is the worst Labour government ever. Financial incompetence doesn't begin to describe the utter folly of allowing borrowing to spiral out of control. When interest rates do rise - you won't get a recession - you'll get something most people can't remember and that is a slump. Read up on the 1930s - that is what is in store for us.

And a voice from behind the door saying "F*ck off you Scots b@stard, I'll 'See you' in hell before you get in here."